Web Service Enhancements 2.0 Tech Preview

Just been posted - a
technical preview of Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0. If you haven't
come across WSE before, it's a package that provides support for new and emerging
web service standards such as WS-Security, WS-Transaction and WS-Addressing.
Fairly safe to install (i.e. it shouldn't break any existing web service stuff, and
it runs side-by side with WSE 1.0). Recommended if you're feeling frustrated
with the lack of application-level services currently available to web services. Eventually
this stuff will be rolled into the .NET Framework itself.

The downside to all these additional standards is that inevitably the process of exposing
and consuming web services gets more complex. The beauty of web services such as MapPoint and
the Amazon
web service today is that they're so easy to access and manipulate. Hopefully
the pendulum will eventually swing to an equilibrium between ease of use and service
capability.